Rugby Union: Tough talking from Chris O’Callaghan on Waterloo future

Mar 18 2008 by Ian Hargraves, Liverpool Daily Post

IF ANYONE still believes that Waterloo’s AGM next Tuesday, followed by a general discussion, is just a routine function, they should read the first team coach’s comment by Chris O’Callaghan in Saturday’s programme.

Waterloo have often been criticised for lack of dynamism and ambition, but their coach, who has only been at Blundellsands for a few months, is a great deal more positive.

He wrote: “That leagues have not been entirely kind to Waterloo is no surprise. There is no structure here to mount an assault on any kind of championship title and perhaps more importantly, there is little will to do so either.

“In purely rugby terms this place is flat and bereft of ambition. For a fair number of people here at Waterloo, rugby has become an irrelevance, a distraction to the more popular urban pastime of talking b______s in a bar in a posh Liverpool suburb. Shame.

“We don’t own this club; we are merely the custodians of 125 years of other people’s ambitions, aspirations and efforts.

“Some of us even confuse bricks and mortar with the dreams, hopes, efforts, endeavours and the myriad of other emotions that constitute a rugby club.”

The highly committed Callaghan goes on to say the club now faces the choice between abandoning professionalism and turning rugby into mainly a social event, “to die, to sleep and never again to dream”.

Callaghan says if nothing dramatic is agreed “the club will plummet like a stone and go into a freefall from which it will never recover”.

He adds: “Some want to keep the cosy watering hole, in an affluent suburb of the European Capital of Culture – for themselves.

“Were a proposal made with the stated ambition of dropping in order to rise from the bottom again, then it would be offering something we could all support.

“Were we to sell our assets, realise our gains, rally our troops and put something in place, that would attract young players from all over the great city of Liverpool – they would be erecting statues to us right now. But they are not; some people only want to drop because they simply can’t be bothered any more.”